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Legal Research

Maptech Announces
New "My Maps"
Maptech has announced a new free feature to MapServer called "My
Maps." My Maps is a collection of more than 65,000 maps, including
topographic maps, marine charts and aeronautical charts. You can start
your map generation at http://navigator2.maptech.com/homepage/index.cfm?

You're asked to select
a location and a state. You don't have to select a city - the search engine
also picks up churches, radio towers, airfields, etc. Anyway, select a
place name and a state and you'll get a list of locations that match or
nearly match ("airfield" picks up Fairfield, for example.)

Click on the place
and you'll be presented with a map that you can zoom and scroll around.
Once the map is the way you want it, you can put icons on it, e-mail to
a friend, or print it.

This site also sells
several mapping and map products, including park guides and software,
but those items aren't rammed down your throat when you're trying to use
the My Maps server. The site's worth a look.

Arkansas
Courts Web Site Updated

A newly updated Arkansas Courts Web site has been announced by the Arkansas
Judiciary and the Information Network of Arkansas. The site is located
at http://courts.state.ar.us.
New features include online searching of databases, information about
the courts and court forms, and the Judicial Directory and the House Style
Guide.

The search links are
on the right side of the front page and include Appellate Court dockets,
Supreme Court opinions, Court of Appeals opinions, and Licensed Attorney
search. The site also includes court forms (in HTML, WordPerfect, or PDF),
links to various Arkansas legal resources, and a Judicial Directory (in
PDF format.)

Lemon
Laws Around the Nation

If your car's
a clinker, check out Lemon Law America at http://www.lemonlawamerica.com/.
This site lists the lemon laws for all states. There's what appears to
be a clickable image map on the front page, but it didn't work for me.
Instead I chose the clickable letters on the front page.

A few of the statue
listings, like North Dakota's, have summaries of the law. Other ones have
just the statutes. Others have definitions preceding the statutes. In
addition to law, this site also has news aboutdifferent types of lemons
(like lemon computers), a short link list, and some "lemon tips"
should you find yourself with a less than stellar car.

Occupational
Safety and Health Information

OSH.net -- http://www.osh.net/-- is
a searchable sorta-subject index of occupational safety and health information
links. The front page lists the several categories of links. Clicking
on one of the categories takes you to a subcategory listing. In many of
these subcategories, the listing is on the left, while the full listing
of the directory -- in outline form -- is on the right. I found this a
tad confusing.

Some of the subcategory
links are better annotated than others. Some links aren't annotated at
all. There are what appear to be paid ads (complete with banner ads) interspersed
throughout the listings. The search engine is a third-party addition to
the site (powered by FreeFind) but appears to work pretty well. A search
for OSHA found 116 links.

In addition to the
link directory, this site has a (short) feature article list. (The articles
are from the OSH.net newsletter. Get the newsletter archives at http://www.listbot.com/cgi-bin/subscriber?Act=view_archive&list_id=OSHNET)
There's also a monthly OSH basics article in a separate section and a
health and safety employment link list (separate from the subject index.)

Researchville.com
-- Prefilled Search Engine Queries

It's sort of like a meta-search engine, but not. Researchville.com (http://www.researchville.com)
gives you a box to enter a query, then lets you choose a search engine
-- or several search engines. For example, say you wanted to search today's
news for flapjack. Enter flapjack in the query box and at the bottom of
the Today's News category, choose "open all links in 6 New Windows."
Six windows will open up, with six news search engines' results for the
query term flapjack.

The site has several
categories, including multimedia, news, and reference. If you have cookies
enabled you can save queries as "favorites" to come back to
again (Researchville.com says it collects no personal information.)

I have seen sites
do something like this before, but it was generally only for one type
of information -- stock and financial information, for example. It's an
interesting idea but one that will take some getting used to. I would
love to see the number of sites and categories expanded, as well.

Radio
Information for the Public Radio Fan

If you're a public radio fan, don't miss http://www.Publicradiofan.com/.
While the tiny font is a little hard on these old eyes, there's a lot
of content here. You can get a listing of what's on now, or get listings
by time, program, or station. Station names are highlighted. I'm not clear
on this but it looks like the highlight color indicates the country of
origin of the station, making it quick to find listings from different
countries. (This site also has station guides available if you're looking
for stations from certain countries.)

There doesn't appear
to be a search engine for the site, which is unfortunate, but there's
plenty to see here if you're willing to browse. Worth a look.